The companionship of dead writers is a wonderful form of live friendship.

I briefly considered writing it as a non-fiction book but the fact of the matter is that George left few traces,

Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang. When a line is good it ceases to belong to any school. A line of prose must be as immutable as a line of poetry.

The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that.